Monday, March 27, 2017

Close Encounters with Jesus: The Man Born Blind

Dear friends in Christ, dear people of Grace, grace to
you and peace from God our father, and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ.Amen.

I remember the time, several years ago, I spent the
morning in the waiting room of a prestigious university hospital.

A member of my congregation was having surgery, so that
she could begin to hear again.A modern
miracle!

It seemed too good to be true!

How can someone who cannot hear – ever learn to hear
again!It’s a procedure called a
“cochlear implant” – and I read up before the surgery to see if I could
understand anything about it.

As I found it, it is not a sure thing.There is more involved in learning to hear
than just having the implants.

Once you do that, your ears have to be retrained so that
they know and can interpret what they are hearing.It takes time.

Still, though, a miracle.Who would have thought it?

The woman who was having the surgery had not been born
deaf.So
in that way she was not like the man in the parable, who had been born
blind.

She had been born with some hearing, but gradually, as
she got older, she began to hear less and less.And she missed it.

She wanted to have the surgery so that she could retrieve
some of what she had lost.She was
willing to try anything.

The man born blind, though, did not appear to be
desperate.

He didn’t approach Jesus, asking for healing.He was just sitting there, an object lesson
for Jesus’ disciples.

So Jesus, they asked, “who sinned, this man or his
parents?What caused his
blindness?”

Jesus does not answer their question really.

It is not the cause that he is interested in so much as
the cure.

For the glory of God – he heals the man.And then the blind man’s troubles begin.

Because:no one
believes him!

They either don’t believe that he was the same man (the
one who sat and begged), or they don’t believe that he was really blind, or they
don’t believe that Jesus could have healed him.

Friends and neighbors question him – even the religious
authorities.It seems that everyone is
looking for a loophole – a reason NOT to believe that something miraculous
might have happened.

No one has ever healed a person blind from birth
before.It never happened before; it
can’t happen now.

If Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, he broke the
law.Therefore he cannot be a holy
person.

There are so many reasons that this miracle could not
have happened.

You have to wonder why people are so quick to dismiss, so
quick to disbelieve – especially in something that seems so -- well -- wonderful…

The only thing that I can think is that somehow this
miracle went against what they already held on to..It upset the status quo.It was unsettling.

It changed
reality.It was like an earthquake,
somehow.

So no one believes this once blind man, and really, all
he has to offer is this testimony, over and over again, “I was blind, but now I
see.”That’s it.It’s just his experience.

He just keeps saying, “This is what happened to me.”

And – and it took me many years of reading this story to
actually notice this – even though this man received his sight from Jesus – he
has not actually SEEN Jesus.

All of the people questioning him – they could ask him
and he would not be able to tell them what Jesus looked like.

He has experienced this healing but he hasn’t seen Jesus
yet.

And I think that’s important.

Because the point is not just to see.The point is to see – Jesus.

And that’s just where all of the rest of the people are
blind, aren’t they?

They see – but they don’t see Jesus.

They don’t recognize him.

They have their own pre-conceptions about what a
respectable Messiah will look like, and he doesn’t fit.

He cares about the wrong people – the poor, the outcast,
the lonely, the desperate.

He is not so interested in cause – as he is in cure.

He goes around healing people without finding out first
if they are worthy.

Blindness.What
does it mean?

In John, it’s not just about physical blindness.

It’s about being blind to the presence and power of Jesus
in our midst.

It’s about being blind to what he is up to, and who he is
calling us to care about, and include.

It’s about being blind to his power – but also his
grace.

It’s about being blind to injustice, blind to other
people, hardened to suffering.

It’s about being blind to how God is working in the
world.

The woman who had the miracle surgery – she was desperate
to hear again, even just a little.

She knew what it was like, and she mourned the loss of
the sounds and the voices she used to know.

Her parents were both hearing, so she was the only one in
the family to have this -- disability.

She and her family came to our church – we had a signer
at one of our services.

And one year in Lent we learned a prayer in sign
language.We said it every week, along
with the sign language.

I am not sure why I thought this was a good Idea,
actually.And truthfully, there were
some people who didn’t think so.

After that year, they said, “Let’s not do that
again.It was a dumb idea.”

Be that as it may, every week we practiced this prayer.

God be in my head, and in my understanding.

God be in my eyes, and in my looking.

God be in my mouth, and in my speaking.

God be in my heart, and in my thinking.

God be in my end, and in mine departing.

On the 5th Sunday
in Lent, I decided to throw caution to the wind.

We would just sign the prayer this time, without speaking
it.

It would be a different way to pray.

So there was this great silence while we “said” the pray
and made the signs together.It was
odd.

It turns out that the woman’s parents were visiting that
weekend.They were in church with her,
and afterwards they said to me, about that prayer, “It was the first time we
understood what our daughter’s world is like.”

God, be in my head, and in my understanding.

The blind man had a close encounter with Jesus.He received his sight.And then – he saw -- Jesus.

Quotes to Ponder

If you know exactly what you are going to do, what's the point of doing it? -- Pablo PIcasso

The central Christian belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many theories have been held as to how it works; what all Christians agree on is that it does work. --C.S. Lewis

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. --Thomas Merton

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking. --Richard Rohr

"I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings." --William Sloane Coffin